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Since the Second Wave emerged in the 1960s, feminism has not only proved to be a productive and enabling mode of academic discourse, introducing women`s issues and thus compelling many significant changes in what had been persistently male exclusive systems. It has also undergone self-transforming changes to cope with the new interests and challenges presented by the women who have existed off-center. "Boundary-crossing" has been, therefore, a forceful strategy while "differences" have been respectfully attended in feminist practices and theories. However, these are not always appreciated as such, for they contradict the concerns of the early feminism which is built upon the foundational claims of gender and identity. One example is the recent controversy over the so-called "death of feminism," which was provoked by Susan Gubar, prominent first-generation feminist critic who accuses feminists of postcoloniality and of poststructuralism of rendering "women" an invalid word. In this paper I examine what is at stake with that controversy and what possibilities could be drawn from it for the future of feminism. Especially, I explore the promises for feminism in engaging with queer theory which the said critic most strongly opposes. I suggest that queer theory`s interrogations of gender identity and hegemonic heterosexuality can inspire and reinforce feminism as well. Performing a reading of Oscar Wilde`s play from the perspectives of both feminism and queer theory, I propose "queer feminism," an alliance mode of the two critical practices, by which to work out the current contention in the field and to effect rearticulations in more enabling ways for those who have been abjected, excluded, or marginalized by normative regimes of the Name/Law of the Father.

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Mary Robinson, a well-known actress and poetess of the Romantic period, has drawn new attention from the cultural studies on the Romantic women poets. The keen concerns she received from the Romantic scholars are due to her intrinsic sense of female authorship as self-dramatization, as it were, the development of multiple masks or voices throughout her works as she once performed them successfully on the stage. As a `female` spectacle on the stage, Robinson played best the role of Perdita, a star-crossed lover of Florizel in The Winter`s Tale, which ironically did not spare her from being politically appropriated by the contemporary spectators in accordance to their diverse stances. The four generally accepted portraits of her, "an actress as whore, an unprotected wife, a star-crossed lover and a female artist as an `English Sappho`, had been advertised by the commercial journalism that wished to read only her body. This paper attempts to read `Robinson`, literally embodied as an `English Sappho`, in two ways: one is to map her role as `the Beautiful` spectacle on the literary stage of the masculine Romanticism, and the other is to trace another voice which falls intermittently through her sonnet elegy of `Sappho and Phaon`. Quite contrary to the journalism`s portrayal of her as a mournful poetess of an `English Sappho`, Robinson betrays her ambitious authorship that aims to `legitimate` her public sphere as solidly as the most sublime poet, Milton, had done in the sonnet tradition. It is not only in the `Preface`, `To the Reader` and `Account of Sappho` that her manifesto is expressed. It is also expressed throughout her sonnet `Sappho and Phaon` by means of a subversive gender role, such as, Sappho as a spectator this time and Phaon as a spectacle of her dear gaze. In this autobiographic elegy read by Sappho in the first person and reread by Robinson through her manifesto, we can understand Robinson`s portrayal of Sappho not as a mythically romanticized beauty but as a female poet who creates her own poetic sphere amongst the other romantic eminences.

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The issue of whether men`s relation to feminism is possible or impossible one has been debated since the mid-1980s especially when a number of male theorists began to take notes of the claims of feminist criticism and to make an intentional connection of it with their own critical sphere. Female feminists, however, did not welcome wholeheartedly this move to feminist criticism on the part of male theorists, even though in principle feminists thought of this move as a hopeful sign of ending the blindness and indifference of male critics toward feminist criticism. For the most part, female feminists were skeptical of the motives of male critics` stepping in feminist criticism. Many believe that the "male feminists," without willingness to change the masculinist bias of their own critical viewpoint, were using feminist criticism merely for the theoretical sophistication of their own critical practice. This issue of the men`s move to feminism is repeated in the deep ecology-ecofeminism relations. Deep ecology and ecofeminism, which are almost exclusively dominated by men and women respectively, share some commonalities especially in the view of human-nature relations. First of all, both deep ecology and ecofeminism highly value bodily experience of contact with nature. The importance of bodily nature and its subsequent stress on the intuitive, sense-based approach to nature have traditionally been women`s unique understanding of nature. Out of the patriarchal vein of Western traditional approach toward nature, deep ecology has moved toward ecofeminism through its emphasis on an experiential, intuitional understanding of nature. Based upon this movement on the part of deep ecology, some deep ecologists argue that studying ecology means to become womanized, and that deep ecologists inevitably become ecofeminists. However, on the part of the ecofeminists, this argument cannot be accepted on the same reason that feminists opposed the male critics` move toward feminist criticism. In reality, the majority of deep ecologists and their writings still neglect the basic ecofeminist issue of the oppression of women and its relation to the oppression of nature. On the other hand, some ecofeminsts argue to introduce a new culture of exclusive women, brandishing all nature-, women-destructive male culture. Facing the massive destruction of our ecosystem, both deep ecology and ecofeminism need to cooperate in order to reduce environmental crisis and maintain our healthy ecosystem as well as rebuild a sound men-women relationship because the issues of environmental destruction and the oppression of women are not the problems of women alone.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine how and for what purpose the metaphor of race is utilized in some 19th century novels. The word metaphor refers to yokings between white women characters and characters of the other races subtly as well as explicitly. The word metaphor also refers to yokings that imply various degrees of similitude or identity. Firdous Azim argues that since the novel has its origin in the era of European colonial expansion, the movement of the novel is always towards the obliteration of the Other, who are determined by class, race and sex. Consequently women in patriarchal societies and colonial subjects are numbered amongst the Other, and thus share the same fate, namely their obliteration. 19th century science drew repeated analogies between white women and "primitive" races, pointing to their similarities to each other, and differences from white men, in such respects as earlier maturation, prognathism, smaller brain volume, and a decreased sensibility to pain, Victorian men gladly believed that women lagged behind men in the evolutionary development much as primitive people lagged behind Europeans. This theory justifies that the "savage" need the guidance of the English Empire and women need to be dominated by intellectually and morally superior men. 19th century is also marked by gender and class related agitations. The social agitations caused by the marginalized, exploited and discontented classes and women in accordance to various uprisings in India and the West Indies posed a serious threat to the interest and security of the Empire. Therefore to maintain the racial, gender and class hierarchy and to justify the social Status quo, oppositional elements needed to be excluded and oppressed. Therefore, in the novels I have studied, white women who are not fit to be "the angle of the house," who are sexually aggressive, who are rebellious, who fight for their rights and individual identities are usually likened and linked to people of "dark races." They are exploited and abused like Oriental odalisques and seraglios, or black slaves. Some are villified and locked up as mad women. Some are forcibly transformed into other types of women. However it is my contention based on empirical evidence that oppressed energies have a tendency to build up, not dissipate, and eventually find some means of expression, as embodied by Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.

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This article explores the conceptual importance of Homi K. Bhabha`s "Third Space" from a perspective of postcolonial feminism, focusing on the enunciation from/on cultural translation in an international and in-between space. In this globalizing era when many people are moving fastly, Bhabha emphasizes the importance of institutionalizing enunciation in the Third Space, dissolving a contingent tension within modernity between the pedagogy of the symbols of progress in terms of sophisticated theory and the "sign of the present" represented by identity politics based on the archives of the "new". In the Third Space, Bhabha argues, we can see the new hybrid identity, passing through the conspicuous stage of the dangerous tryst with the "untranslatable". It is the precondition for producing a situated knowledge by enunciating the "untranslatable" on the "Third Space". Since we cannot imagine the identity without thinking of gender, it is necessary to define the concept of gender as the shifting signifier on the Third Space. This process inevitably includes the establishment of the new knowledge system on gender by enunciating the cultural difference and cultural globality. For this purpose, the issue of the "I"-statesments in academic writing is useful because it has opened the way to a subtle but important distinction -between "the personal" and "the autobiographical", and further "the positional" - as well as to the more political issue of why "I"-statements are appealing and powerful to produce the situated knowledge, especially for the non-Western, non-European feminist intellectuals. In-short, what "we", teaching feminist studies in English literature in Korean university classroom, have to do is to enunciate our experience self-reflexively through "I"-statements in academic writing in order to produce the new knowledge system on gender based on time-spatiality of "Here and Now."

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This paper aims to investigate the problem of violence represented in some twentieth century novels by women, based on the recognition that violence is a gendered phenomenon within the context of patriarchal social relations. Feminist theorizing of violence has engaged with the existing analysis of family and the state, and has insisted that violence against women is not a question of individuals doing harm to individuals, but of patriarchal social structure. Thus, feminists have argued that the way violence is used and acted out in relationships, encounters and institutions is specifically gendered and constructed by, as well as a reflection of, the power relations which constitute hetero-patriarchy. This paper examines women writers` diverse and complex responses toward the concept of power and violence. First, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Virginia Woolf, who belong to the first wave of feminism, take a firm stance in non-violence, regarding violence and war as the outcome of male-centered fascism. Their pacifism emphasizes motherhood as a way of overcoming male violence. Secondly, Monique Wittig and Maxine Hong Kingston, who belong to the second wave of feminism, recognize patriarchal power relations as the conditions in which women have been excluded, devalued, and silenced by a language whose subject is always masculine. They thus stage a cultural war against phallocentric language and symbols. They are different from the first-wave feminist writers in that they do not avoid counter-violence, which is for them a holy war against the male-oriented symbolic order. Thirdly, unlike Wittig and Kingston who argue for women`s counter-violence in cultural fields, Toni Morrison and Helen Zahavi, who produced their major novels in the 1980s and 1990s, perceive sexual violence as the outcome of male dominion over women`s bodies. They clearly demonstrate that sexual violence, combined with class and racial factors, embodies the patriarchal concept of women as `others` and `subalterns.` Based on this perception, it is no accident that the heroines of their novels consciously commit a brutal murder as a way of revenging the society which overlooks female victimization These new portrayals of physically excoriating counter-violence by women suggest how far Western women have moved away from their non-violent, pacifist days. Despite their differences, however, twentieth century women novelists represent women`s longing for exercising their power in ways that intervene, disrupt and obstruct the workings of the patriarchal order. They show that women must understand those dimensions of their power which are capable of confronting gender dominance, and transforming it in ways women are recognized as equal subjects as men

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Freud`s desire for writing in couple with his male comrades(Breuer, Fliess, Jung, and Rank) can be traced in his all writings. Sartre also had revealed the same desire. But their trials had ended in failure, because they had to play the roles of father figures in the areas of psychoanalysis and existentialism. That is, they had to Writing is a performative activity. The mechanism of the traditional writing scene is usually based on the hierarchical oppressive coupling system. In the writing scene, a writer dramatizes her/his position as a writing subject. In fact, the performance sets up a stage for the subversion of the subject`s authorship by making the subject reveal "the object within the subject". Writing is a performative activity. In the writing scene, a writer dramatizes her/his position as a writing subject. The performance of writing sets up a stage for the subversion of the authorship which is usually based on the hierarchical oppressive coupling system by making the writing subject reveal "the object within the subject".

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The purpose of this article is to present and review Juidth Butler`s critical theory on gender identity and its effectiveness in four perspectives: parody, performativity, subjection, and melancholia. Butler is one of the most famous and influential queer theorists and feminists in the comtemporary feminist politics of identity. Gender identity is a highly important subject in the contentious feminist camp, because `Woman` cannot represent all the spectrum of subaltern and subcategorical `women`, and also the `women` cannot describe the provisional and temporal identities of individual `women-in-process`, though feminism is not possible without the political subject of Woman. Butler`s anti-essential and constitutive gender is constructed by four methodological forms: parody, performativity, subjection, and melancholia. Gender is only a parody without the original gender characteristic or the proper gender core, because mimesis structure inverts and displaces the imitated/the imitating in that the copy imitates the ideal element presumed to be original, not original itself. Performativity means gender is constituted in repetitively stylized acts, corporealization mode, and discursive ritual. Gender is a set of `repeated acts` within a highly rigid regulatory frame, and the `repeated stylization of the body` that congealed over time, and also the `repeated discursive effect` to produce the appearance of substance. Subjection presents subject formation method in the form of paradox: subject`s self-construction as a ontological being depends on subjection to the predominant power system. Melancholia suggests an incomplete and unfinished identification mode incorporating the prohibited and excluded taboo. After all, the transformative possibility of repeated and reiterative re-signification, re-articulation, and re-appropriation of unfixed, changeable, self-contradictory gender identity including constitutive outside is the subversive and revolutionary possibility of feminist politics in Judith Butler.

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The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the cultural political potentiality of Black female body by exploring Black feminist theories of Barbara Smith, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Rose Brewer, and Patricia Hill Collins, who regard the multiplicity and simultaneity of oppressions as crucial to the matter of representing Black women`s bodies. To do that, this paper focuses on the specific aspects of Black female sexuality and labor. Working with and over the insights of Frantz Fanon, Stuart Hall, and Homi Bhabha, Black feminist theorists try to make Black female body visible and a significant place of resistance. They conceptualize sexuality as one important site where heterosexism, class, race, nation, and gender as systems of oppression converge. Then, they reveal the sexual politics of Black womanhood that shaped Black women`s experiences with pornography, prostitution, and rape relied upon racist, sexist, and heterosexist ideologies to exploit Black women`s sexualities and bodies. Especially, hooks problematizes such myths of Black women as matriarch and mammy because they have colonized Black women`s bodies by desexualizing Black womanhood. Analyzing the economic restructuring of the global capitalism since 1970s, Collins points out the global gendered apartheid, which the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy has constructed and caused the poverty and sick bodies of Black women. In this context, the location of Black female body can be sought in each specific `homeplace` resistant to the global gendered apartheid.

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Hilda Doolittle emerged on Poetry in 1913 as "H. D. Imagiste" ; H. D.`s Imagist poetry was not limited to absolute precision without excess. Especially in the growth of Modernism beyond the aesthetic world of Imagism, the hieroglyphic characteristics of her images have turned to the quest for new meanings in mythological and literary traditions. Hieroglyph is an image fraught with meaning but never acquired or known, like myth which deals with ultimate questions of translinguistic fact. In interpreting the hieroglyphic nature of life, myth helps H. D. to discover the mysteries buried in human experience. However, patriarchal traditions of interpreting myths do not encourage H. D. to discover the mysteries especially in women`s experience. Her works come to be the revisionist mythmaking, transforming the myths of past and creating new myths. H. D. calls our attention to the need for renewal based on the life-giving values associated with women. However, life`s hieroglyphs in her reading still remain as an enigma that we must continue to read. In her epic, Helen in Egypt, H. D. reconsiders Helen in Troy who has been defined as beauty and evil in terms of her sexuality. In the alternating process of Love and Death, Thesis, Mother Goddess, leads Helen and Achilles to transcend the limitations of sex roles. And their child, Euphorion, represents the image of bisexual resolution, but still with tensions of opposites. In contrast with Woolf`s androgyny which is of the creative mind, not of the body, H. D.`s bisexuality in Helen in Egypt refers to the body with sexual desire as well as to the mind. In addition, Helen in Egypt reminds us that a revisionist mythmaking is just a resolution which demands the interpretations to go on and on.